


Iron Man Alone

by MousesizeDragon



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MousesizeDragon/pseuds/MousesizeDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony Stark comes back from Afghanistan he’s missing his daemon (or that’s how it seems). This, more than his new status as Iron Man, is what captures everyone’s attention. Can a man who abandoned part of his own soul be a trustworthy hero?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Through the Desert

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pagen_godess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagen_godess/gifts).



> WARNING: has separation from ones daemon, Post Traumatic Stress and mentions being held captive and tortured.
> 
> Disclaimer: Daemons are not my own creation and the idea definitely doesn’t belong to me. None of the Avengers nor Iron Man, movies or otherwise, belong to me either, and I’m basing this off the movies. You’ll notice I stole a lot of dialogue directly from the Avengers and Iron Man movies; it’s purposeful and not mine.
> 
> I'm dedicating this, and all the Avengers works I'm going to transfer over from FFN, to pagen_godess who is my buddy on FFN and gave me an invite to AO3.

When he’s hit, his own missile explodes on him, they recognize that the last thing they saw was Rhodey going down. Whoever the hostile force is they’ve won. But being a genius Tony thinks of a plan, in the few moments where he’s bleeding but before they can pass out, he tells Meeshka to hide. She crawls under a large pile of rocks a few feet away and they hope that when the people shooting at them come to check they’ll assume he’s already dead without his daemon in sight. It works a little too well. He’s fading in and out of consciousness as these men drag him into the back of their truck and drive away, he can feel Meeshka getting farther and farther away for all she tries to crawl after them across the desert.

It’s a surprise to everyone, him and his captors, that he’s still alive when they finally stop up in the mountains somewhere. Their rough handling of his limp body forces a groan of pain out. Suddenly it’s a flurry of activity and yelling in languages he doesn’t know. He manages to keep himself conscious through the long and painful surgery they do on his chest. Still there’s the knowledge in the back of his head that Meeshka is slowly getting closer and closer to him. She’s all he can think of and while they can stand short distances, Obie says she sometimes makes the board members nervous so she spends most of those boring meetings dozing a few feet away on the other side of the door, right now she’s too far away. The digging and cutting and removing things from his chest really doesn’t help, and it’s painful too.

He doesn’t remember his fever dreams or the times he wakes up in agonizing pain too well because all he’s focused on is how long he can stay conscious and how much closer Meeshka can get in that time. Eventually he wakes with a gasp and a tube up his nose. Meeshka is just outside the cave he’s being held in, probably, she’s as close as she’s been since these men took him away from her but she’s not moving any closer and he knows that now she must be hiding from his captors. She is a part of him and they know each other perfectly, he’s pretty sure that as much as it hurts to be separated they are both in agreement that it would be worse if these men caught her too. Neither of them likes the idea of being caged.

Tony’s been called cold, emotionless, and heartless before, but now he’s soulless. Although his captors seem puzzled by his lack of a daemon at first they quickly decide it doesn’t effect to their plans. The torture these terrorists inflict on him is nothing, it barely registers past the pain of the separation from his daemon. When he starts hearing Meeshka’s voice faintly in his head he thinks he’s going crazy. She tells him it’s been 74 days since they last saw each other, last touched or spoke. He agrees to build their missile. Almost two weeks later, 13 more days to be exact, the leader Raza, with his savage looking hyena daemon, comes in and drags Yinsen’s kind badger daemon close enough to the fire to singe her fur. Yinsen, from where he shakes in pain on his knees as their captors hold him back and let their boss manhandle his daemon, claims they’re working on the Jericho missile even as his daemon is threatened with hot coals. Tony, as he desperately thanks whatever god of luck has kept Meeshka hidden from these men, steps forward and promises they’ll finish the missile by tomorrow.

They finish the suit that night and he escapes the next day. Yinsen dies to buy him more time and before his eyes the man breathes his last and Hypcrie, his daemon, turns to Dust beside him. Tony can’t contain the rage and sorrow at seeing this man die for him, he’s already half crazy from separation and he’s hearing his daemon’s voice in his head, he’s not completely sure it’s really her and not just a wishful auditory hallucination. He storms out of the cave and he burns everything in his path, men, daemons, and weapons alike. A lucky bullet hits the gears on the leg and he goes down to one knee, it’s time to fly away but he’s still missing Meeshka. Then her familiar black form, looking as thin and ragged as he feels, bounds through the flames and latches onto his back. He flicks the boot jets on and they rocket away from the burning cave.

It doesn’t matter that they crash land in the middle of the desert and they’ve been gone for three months now so who knows if anyone’s still looking for them, he’s got his daemon back. Still they trudge on together and he doesn’t let his hand separate from Meeshka even when Rhodey, with Skira his great blue heron daemon flapping around in distress, jumps out of the helicopter and hugs him. On the ride home he’s quiet, Meeshka and him talk softly in their minds about shutting down Stark Industries’ weapons manufacturing sections, and he barely notices Skira combing her beak through Meeshka’s fur to untangle the knots and pick out the clumps of dirt. They’re too absorbed in finally being back together.

When Happy stops by the burger joint they silently agree that if Tony is going to make the announcement now he needs to look strong and sure of himself. Unfortunately Meeshka looks like she has mange and was starved for the last three months, a testament to how battered his spirit is after their ordeal. It doesn’t strike him as odd that he and Meeshka are still talking telepathically until Pepper comments on his silence. He shrugs and can’t decide whether to tell her he and Meeshka don’t need to speak out loud any more before Meeshka climbs into the trunk and curls up while he heads into the press conference. They lasted three months apart and now he’s pretty sure they’re broken because even fifty feet and a few walls doesn’t feel like too much.

“Mr. Stark, where is Meeshka?” A pretty brunette reporter opens with. His beautiful, graceful companion would usually be right up front preening with all the attention to her but now she’s nowhere to be seen.

This question he’s almost not sure how to answer, most of him wants to build a suit of armor for her before letting anyone else near her again. “We were, separated, by my captors,” he admits hesitantly. Then he continues to make a little speech about his father, doubts, and accountability as a lead in.

“Mr. Stark!” The reporters scramble to ask him questions.

“Hey, Ben.” He nods to a familiar face; Ben is from an actual newspaper and he usually asks pertinent questions and doesn’t stray into the more personal stuff tabloids tend to focus on.

“What happened over there?”

“I had my eyes opened. I came to realize that I have more to offer this world than just making things that blow up. And that is why, effective immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark International until such a time as I can decide what the future of the company will be. What direction it should take, one that I’m comfortable with and is consistent with the highest good for this country, as well.”

He announces the shut down of weapon manufacturing and goes to wait for Obie in the ARC Reactor building. Meeshka stretches and leaps out of the trunk to follow him in. He’s already thinking of ways to improve the armored suit’s design for better flight capabilities while he waits and Meeshka rubs against his legs and lets out a rumbling purr. _“If you get a flying suit I want one of my own,”_ she sends her thoughts to him.

 _“A flying panther suit?”_ He shoots back as he smirks, _“I was already planning on it.”_

 _“Good, I don’t like feeling so vulnerable,”_ she informs him as she squeezes between the railing and his body. Both of them feel unsafe out in the open, it may have something to do with how the men snatched him away from her when he was lying out in the open or it could stem from her being stuck out on a mountain hiding from those same men for three months before they could be reunited. They both have memories that the other doesn’t, it’s disturbing to think that Meeshka only knows Yinsen through what Tony shared with her, she never met the man who saved their lives and shared a cave with Tony for three months. Now as they wait for Obadiah and Eziral, Obie’s large grey boar daemon, he can feel her anxiousness at being open to attack even in his own factory.

Eventually he breaks the silence, but only in their minds, _“You know, I think most of the people at the press conference assumed you were still lost to me.”_

 _“Perfect, I don’t want anyone but you touching me, even other daemons,”_ she sounds both smug and anxious at the same time. For a moment he’s afraid that his own trauma has bled over into her and that’s why she suddenly has an irrational dislike of physical contact, then he scoffs at the thought because she is him, she is a physical representation of his soul so of course his fears affect her. He’s struck by an image, an idea, from her.

 _“You want to hide? Pretend you aren’t here anymore? You want me to tell the world we’re damaged? People without a daemon are broken, lost, it’s, that’s unnatural,”_ he protests because he can see her thoughts and she’s very serious about hiding, it’s crazy that he understands. A huge part of him also wants to keep her safe away from the world. They both want to lock the other away in a tower.

 _“You’re Tony Stark, I think they’ll believe that if you wanted to survive without a daemon you’d find a way.”_ Slipping away and around to the other side of the giant reactor she sounds almost giddy with her next comment. _“Build me an armored suit and we’ll let the world think you built a robot to replace me. I can be safe and by your side at the same time.”_

The idea has merit, because right now it feels like the only way he’ll ever be safe again is hidden behind a protection he builds himself. Most people would balk at the thought of covering their daemon up with metal, regular physical contact with one’s daemon is pretty much the rule, but he and Meeshka are so close it doesn’t feel like an issue anymore. Sure when they’re alone in the workshop she’ll weave her way in circles around his legs like she did before and when they sleep he’ll probably end up using her as a pillow as he so often used to, but now their minds are always touching. 

As an impossible act of desperation they, or maybe it was all on him, forced their usual bond to become something different, stronger in some ways and lacking in others. They don’t need physical contact because no matter how far away they forged an unprecedented bond that keeps their minds in contact. But now there is no more pull to be near one another. Form this new type of connection or go crazy and die from being separated. It shouldn’t have been possible, even just a few days of separation from their daemon was enough to drive most grown men to their knees in desperation, three months should have driven both Tony and Meeshka completely insane. Somehow they’ve survived.

Meeshka is still dancing through the shadows when Obie finally arrives. He’s not happy with the way Tony just shut down most of Stark Industries International’s business and Eziral snorts disdainfully at Tony when he talks about doing something else. Rhodey told Obie about the miniature ARC Reactor already so Tony unbuttons his shirt and shows it to him. Eziral crowds up against Obadiah’s legs to peer at the blue light before Obie buttons his shirt back up. He promises to lay low while Obie gets the press off their backs, it won’t be hard since he’s already focused on thinking of ways to build a functional suit for his panther daemon. They’ll want to figure it out before going out in public. Meeshka stays hidden and it’s the start of the biggest lie in the history of their lives. To the world Tony Stark’s daemon was separated from him and left wandering the Afghan desert, and he doesn’t care enough to look for her, he claims that with their bond severed he’s fine the way he is. Only Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, and soon enough Obie know that he still has Meeshka.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the ‘Avengers with Daemons’ crossovers I’ve read give Tony a daemon that is small and easily kept in the suit with him. But none of them seem to me like they’ve really looked at the symbolism of the creature(s), they just chose something small that they liked. Tony with a hummingbird daemon? Hummingbirds represent optimism and sweetness and that doesn’t sound like Tony Stark to me. Same with a little snake that curls up around his reactor; most of the traditional symbolic characterizations of a snake don’t fit Tony except the rebirth or shedding their old skin metaphors. So here’s my take, and yes all the daemons in this story come with careful consideration as to their symbolism and what that means about the person I’m assigning them to, although I’m only going to take the time to explain the major ones. Please assume that unless specifically stated all daemons are the opposite gender of their human. Also some of the daemons’ names have meanings, some don’t, like Meeshka which was the name of Tony’s black panther daemon in the dream I had that inspired this and isn’t a real name that I’m aware of but I liked how it sounded and the nickname that went with it so I kept it.
> 
> Just so you understand where I’m coming from with Tony and Meeshka’s new bond, I’m establishing that people speak to their daemons out loud, sure in very quiet whispers, but still out loud. Daemons can practically read their humans mind in predicting what they want/are thinking because they are an extension of the same soul and often have the same or similar thoughts about things but it’s never a two-way telepathic link like the one I’ve given Tony and Meeshka. As part of their connection a daemon will feel agitated when their human does; feelings, emotions and impressions are shared but direct thoughts are not.
> 
>  **Tony = Meeshka = (Black) Panther:** Guardian Energy, Understanding of Death, Reclaiming Ones’ Power, Ability to Know the Dark and the Truth that Hides in It, Death, Rebirth, Swiftness, Cunning, Strength, Perseverance, Boldness, Beauty, Gaining Confidence, Intelligent, denotes caution is necessary, superior fighting courage (often in the feminine form), In the positive it has a beautiful voice and in the negative the panther’s cry represents danger, it sometimes symbolizes Christ, the Panther is said to keep the diabolical dragon away (i.e. mythical being of destruction, often depicted with horns, remind you of anyone? *cough*Loki*cough* or just the Chitari in general), A black panther is considered especially dangerous in some cultures; Panthers are the Apex Predators in their respective ecosystems and many native cultures believe them to be larger and fiercer than their non-melanistic counterparts (jaguars, leopards, cougars, etc.).
> 
>  **Yinsen = Hypcrie (comes from Hippocrates and a doctor’s Hippocratic Oath) = (Eurasian) Badger:** Keeper of Stories, Bold Self-Expression, Single-Mindedness, Passion, Cunning, Revenge, Perseverance, Control, Antidote to Passivity or Victimization, Persistence in the Service of a Mission, Groundedness, Knowledge of the Earth, Wisdom, Creative Action in a Crisis, Protection of Rights and Spiritual Ideas, there is an aspect of parental care to badgers in many cultures, they are seen as a maternal, caring and protective, symbol in some cultures and a representative of paternal protectiveness in others (I was actually tempted to give Bruce Banner a badger daemon as there’s also an aspect of aggressiveness to badgers but then I found something better, and Yinsen is definitely the personification of the antidote to passivity and victimization in Tony’s story. The electromagnet thing to save Tony’s life was creative action in a crisis, and I think we can all agree that he managed to persevere and cunningly get revenge on his captors/his family’s killers through his assistance to Tony.)
> 
>  **Rhodey = Skira = (Great Blue) Heron:** Vigilance, Quiet, Tact, Renewal, Life, Transformation, Patience, Grace (I’m sure it has taken a hell of a lot of patience, grace, and tact when smoothing ruffled feathers to survive being Tony Stark’s best (and seemingly only) friend since college. Also he seems rather like the quiet sidekick to Tony’s loud attention hogging persona and it couldn’t have hurt to be vigilant when he was working his way up in the air force.)
> 
>  **Obadiah = Eziral = (Wild or European) Boar:** denotes a haughty personality, or a bore to others, an aggressive animal, a symbol of unflinching ferocity, symbol primarily of diabolical forces as in the case of tyrants, represents military strength (This one really shouldn’t need any explanation as it all embodies Stane perfectly.)
> 
> None of this is Betaed by anyone but me so sorry for any mistakes. And this is only my third time using this HTML format.
> 
> Originally published on 29 October, 2012 over on FFN.


	2. Call Yourselves Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Tony Stark comes back from Afghanistan he’s missing his daemon (or that’s how it seems). This, more than his new status as Iron Man, is what captures everyone’s attention. Can a man who abandoned part of his own soul be a trustworthy hero?
> 
> The lie is established and freedom achieved.

Once they’re back in the workshop Tony sets up files for an improved suit for him and a similar suit for Meeshka. Hers will be more difficult because of things like how to make the tail armor mobile enough to act like her tail and still keep the strength offered by solid sheets of metal. Also things like retractable claws and whether she’ll be able to open her mouth and bite things while in the suit. It’s hard to remember, while he’s working, that only he and Meeshka can hear each other when they speak in their heads, he has to repeat things out loud for JARVIS a lot. He has to re-train himself to talk to her out loud, even if she only ever answers in his head.

JARVIS pulls up all the research and reports on separating a person from their daemon at his request. He and Meeshka curl up on the couch in the workshop and try to figure out how they managed to survive. The best they can do is the myths of witches and shamans who willingly separate from their daemon to travel through a wilderness and gain the ability to remain apart from their daemon and sleep at different times yet still be bonded, amongst other things. Maybe him telling Meeshka to go hide counted as willing separation? It can’t be a case of a severed bond since that usually ends in making one dull and complacent while the daemon becomes little more than an animal. Meeshka is not just an animal and he is still just as stubborn and brilliant as ever. One thing they are sure of is that they’re still bonded, even more so than before since they directly share thoughts now.

They give up guessing and move back to their quest to fly. Rhodey would be good to have in on the suit project; he’d love the idea of being able to fly with Skira and it’s practically the opposite of the ‘plane without a pilot’ unmanned aircrafts that he’s always hating on. As a test of how far they can get from each other Tony leaves Meeshka at home when he drives out to the air force base. She has a theory that the more they use their mental connection the stronger it gets. A few miles doesn’t even faze them, he still hears her running commentary as she plays with the holographic designs for her suit loud and clear in the back of his mind. He ignores her demands for a giant robotic cat toy, for now.

“Why not a pilot without the plane?” As the group of rookies turns to look at Tony Rhodey frowns but introduces him. Tony also frowns, internally, as everyone shifts closer to their daemon when they see his is missing. Tony and his beautiful panther daemon Meeshka were famous, they’d been in the news all the time before Afghanistan, and to see him without her was wrong. After that first press conference the tabloids went wild with speculation as to what had happened while he was captive, and where Meeshka was now.

Once he shoos away the cadets Rhodey looks around more carefully. “Where’s Meesy?”

Tony smiles at hearing Meeshka’s nickname, still he’s not sure how well Rhodey would take the news that he left her at home and it didn’t affect them. “She’s just outside, in the car, she doesn’t like being around other people anymore.”

Nodding in acceptance but still looking concerned Rhodey continues, “I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

“I swear, I didn’t expect to see you walking around so soon,” Rhodey admits with the start of a grin visible.

“I’m doing a little better than walking.” Meeshka unhelpfully inserts comments that only he can hear about how _she’s_ already leaping over tables again.

“Really?” Rhodey folds his arms and Skira lands on his shoulder, they both peer hopefully at Tony.

“Yeah. Rhodey, I’m working on something big. I came to talk to you. I want you to be a part of it.”

“You’re about to make a whole lot of people around here real happy, ‘cause that little stunt at the press conference, that was a doozy.” He’s full on smiling now and Tony hates to take that away but he’s sure that once he explains Rhodey will understand that he can’t let things go on like they were knowing that people like the Ten Rings were also his ‘loyal customers’ using his weapons to hurt instead of protect. The conversation quickly dissolves as Tony denies going back on his word to stop building weapons and Rhodey accuses him and Meeshka of needing time and therapy to get their minds right again.

“You wanted me to change just a few months ago, well I changed and there’s no way for me to go back to how it was before.” He leaves angry at his oldest and closest human friend and now he’s the one ranting to Meeshka during the drive home.

He builds the first suit for himself while perfecting the plans for hers, then he tests his so he can make sure Meeshka’s suit is perfection before she even puts it on. Thankfully he’s the one who has to deal with the icing problem and not her, he’s got opposable thumbs to manually open the flaps. Then fiddling a little more with the designs and changing to the gold-titanium alloy he catches his own name coming out of the TV Meeshka’s watching.

“...Tony Stark’s third annual benefit for the Firefighter’s Family Fund has become the place to be for L.A.’s high society.”

“JARVIS, we get an invite for that?”

“I have no record of an invitation, Sir.”

“...hasn’t been seen in public since his bizarre and highly controversial press conference. Some claim he’s suffering from posttraumatic stress brought on by separation from his daemon, Meeshka, and has been bedridden for weeks. Whatever the case may be, no one expects an appearance from him tonight.”

 _“Well. She’s practically begging you to show up,”_ Meeshka points out wryly as he makes distracted conversation about his suit’s color with JARVIS.

 _“You’re right, and it is my annual benefit after all.”_ “Don’t wait up for me honey,” he tells Meesy and JARVIS as he slips on his watch and heads upstairs to find a tux. The benefit is not that fun. Sure there’s the whole firmly establishing him as daemonless by arriving by himself still with no Meeshka in sight but other than that it’s really just upsetting.

Agent Coulson, who approaches him at the bar, is not someone he’s going to be taking lightly any time soon, with the way his big grey and brown wolf daemon manages to look like he’s some harmless breed of dog so easily. It’s a clever tactic and reminds Tony so very much of what he’s been doing his whole life; first by Meeshka acting like a really big housecat instead of the wild predator she is, and now completely hiding her continued existence and shielding her from the world with a suit of armor.

Then Pepper is upset because Meeshka isn’t there and she’s worried about them and embarrassed that Pruitt, her sweet hummingbird daemon, was stuck zipping around their heads by himself while all the other couple’s daemons interacted. To top the night off as terrible that reporter he slept with the night before he went to Afghanistan and her annoying, snobbish Chihuahua daemon show him pictures of Yinsen’s village being destroyed by the terrorists that held them captive. Then Obadiah all but confirms that he’s dealing under the table. And he’s the one who got Tony shut out of his own company.

When he gets home he sees Meeshka’s suit is done, she insisted it should be black as it was supposedly a replacement for her. Still that’s probably what makes it such a terrifying sight; much larger than a normal panther since it is built to hold and not replace her, the suit is all sleek unnatural metal curves and a solid black, the miniature ARC Reactor powering it is hidden from view under layers of armor. With the shiny black outer shell segments it looks almost insect like. He watches the news reports and fiddles with his own, much flashier, suit before making a decision. _“I’m going to stop them. Use your suit to follow me, stay low, use stealth mode, and try to stay as far back as possible. We can test the limits of our connection and your suit while I get rid of those weapons.”_

Aside from the slight hitch of the air force hitting him with one of their planes and having to rescue the pilot while the second plane tries to shoot him out of the sky it goes pretty well. The terrorists are dealt with, the missiles destroyed, and the villagers saved. Rhodey still claims he can’t come check out Tony’s project even though he now knows it’s a flying suit. He sounds extremely concerned when he asks where Meeshka was during the whole ordeal, and Tony wonders what he’s thinking happened, but all Tony tells him is “close” because they’re still touchy about their warped bond.

Meeshka and him establish that while in the air with no obstacles between them they can be about a hundred miles apart before their mental connection gets noticeably weaker, after about five hundred miles they can’t hear each other at all, but other than that there is no pull back towards each other. Sure they both really want to go back to each other, Tony hates when Meeshka is out of his line of sight and she’s almost as bad in return, but the pain of being separated isn’t there anymore, just the paranoia of possibly losing one another again.

He and Meeshka destroy all the weapons caches they can find snooping on the shared Stark Industries servers. But eventually, just a few weeks later, they’ve run out of shared access. That afternoon he asks Pepper to search Stark Industries computers for a ghost drive where the under the table deals would be recorded. Eventually she agrees to help, after he explains that there must be a reason he and Meeshka survived so long apart. They shouldn’t be alive; they shouldn’t have survived, not unless there was a reason behind it. So Pepper goes and then she calls him on the house phone. There’s a high noise and Meeshka collapses where she stands by the elevator, they were about to head back down to the shop, and he is paralyzed on the couch.

Obadiah betrayed them. He built a suit and ripped the Reactor out of Tony’s chest to power it. He used tech that Tony designed to paralyze him and Meeshka, then left them for dead. And now he’s going to kill Pepper. The crawl back to the elevator and across the workshop is the most difficult trip he’s ever made, even with Meeshka trying to push him along as much as she can while still partially paralyzed herself. It’s DUMMI who saves their lives this time, handing the old Reactor down to him when Tony can’t fight the paralysis fast enough to get up and reach it himself.

Rhodey rushes in ten minutes later and tells them Pepper has a group of Agents with her to arrest Obadiah. “That’s not gonna be enough,” even as he lets Rhodey help him up Tony calculates the chances that Stane will have already reached his suit before those Agents arrive at eighty-seven percent. He walks over to the suit assembly system while he confers with Meeshka in his mind. _“I need to go save Pepper, Stane has to be stopped. Your suit isn’t as battle capable as mine.”_

 _“Have JARVIS start machining another Mark II Reactor. I’ll bring it to you when it’s complete. Stay alive until then,”_ she replies easily, accepting that they will be more effective separated. _“After this you will make my armor just as dangerous as yours, I want tank missiles and lasers, and some other stuff too.”_

“That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Rhodey whistles as the suit assembles.

“Not bad, huh?” Tony offers as the suit finishes assembling, “Let’s do it.” He blasts the squashed car out of the way so he can use the hole in the roof to fly out.

“You need me to do anything else?” Rhodey offers them. He might have been talking about helping Meeshka attach to the suit somehow or maybe he thinks the suit needs a launch code typed into a computer, regardless of what he means Tony and Meeshka made everything automated since they don’t really trust others anymore and Obadiah just proved them right. Self-sufficient is the way to go.

Tony lets the faceplate lock shut before responding, “Keep the skies clear.” Then he fires up the repulsors.

“Wait! What about Meesy?” Rhodey yells before Tony can lift off, he and Skira look slightly panicked when they glance at Tony’s un-suited daemon. They’re out of time so Tony blasts away and lets Meeshka explain.

“Tony and I aren’t bonded in the normal way anymore.” Meeshka speaks aloud to another living being for the first time since the attack and subsequent kidnapping. Up until now she’s only mind-spoken with Tony and occasionally given JARVIS requests out loud. Where once she might not have minded, she preened and bragged to the usually quiet Skira all the time before, now she feels exposed and uncomfortable. Pacing over to watch the machines building the new miniaturized ARC Reactor she lets her tail lash in agitation and wonders if it would be rude to don her own suit as a barrier. “We feel no pain or discomfort at physical separation. Like old elastic stretched beyond repair distance doesn’t matter to us anymore.” Finally, it’s been less than a minute, she can’t stay exposed any longer and steps onto her own automated assembly platform.

“Damn!” Rhodey looks even more impressed at her suit than he was by Tony’s.

“Go. Keep the sky open for us,” her voice comes out as an overly robotic growl, no trace of humanity or life to it, and Skira fluffs up her feathers uncomfortably from where she was trying to make herself smaller on Rhodey’s right shoulder.

Glancing at the Mark II suit hanging behind him Rhodey mutters, “Next time, baby,” before he hops into one of Tony’s cars and zooms away towards the air force base.

Tony defeats Stane and Eziral, who sat smugly in the giant suit alongside her human, with help from Pepper. When Rhodey and Pepper manage to find a safe route to the roof they find Tony with the ARC flickering in his chest. A few minutes later Meeshka, in all her suited glory, lands lightly on what’s left of the roof beside Pepper and offers a glowing Reactor held carefully in her metal covered mouth. With the power in the suit the slightest twitch could break the new Reactor so she holds completely still as Pepper gently eases it out of her mouth. Once her mouth is free Meeshka directs Rhodey on how to manually remove the armor in her suit generated robotic voice. They finish replacing the Reactor just before Agent Coulson from the really-long-and-hard-to-remember-name-government-agency pulls himself out of the rubble that’s left of Sector 16. By the time he makes his way to the roof Tony is already waking back up.

“Agent,” Tony acknowledges him with a weary nod. Now he’s got to explain away Meeshka in her suit. “Meet the Meeshka-Bot Mark I, the perfect robotic replacement for my daemon.” His weak introduction could hopefully be written off as exhaustion kicking in and not the fact that they hadn’t planned how to introduce her to the public quite yet.

Meeshka knows he needs the attention off of him and the cover held so she stands between the Agent and Tony and does something rare for a daemon, she speaks directly to a human not her own, for the third time that night. Daemons chat amongst themselves, they speak to their human, and sometimes even speak to their human purposefully loud enough to be overheard by other humans nearby, but usually they only speak to other humans when absolutely necessary. In her opinion this qualifies as necessary. “My purpose is to serve as Mr. Stark’s body guard and replacement daemon. Please state your full name and intentions towards Mr. Stark so I may evaluate your threat level.” With her suit filtering her voice she sounds like a perfect gender neutral, emotionless, robot.

The unflappable Agent just blinks once, slowly, before responding. “I’m Agent Phil Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

JARVIS quickly fills Meeshka in on everything he’s hacked and gathered about the group since they first heard about it a few weeks ago. “We are familiar with your organization. What do you want with Mr. Stark?”

“Just to help contain the situation, limit media exposure, control what stories the press prints, that sort of thing,” Agent Coulson remains ever so calm, his wolf daemon standing in a far more relaxed posture than most could have managed immediately after digging their way out of a burning building to talk with a dangerous looking robot.

“That appears to be in line with your organization’s prior actions in similar cases, you may proceed. However, please remain aware that my programming allows me to act against both humans and daemons so long as they are deemed a threat to Mr. Stark.” Meeshka steps aside, Tony’s now standing even if he is leaning most of his weight on Rhodey, and smirks under her suit. This is freedom beyond when she used to turn into a bird when Tony was young, this is the ability to do and act and say and be whatever she wants. There are no more limits, the rules no longer apply, and they are going to enjoy every minute of it.

“I am Iron Man.”

Tony smirks and waits until the reporters have almost calmed down to drop the second bomb. “And I’ve built a robot to replace Meeshka, who I’m sure is already living a happy life as a wild panther so I’m still not planning on going back and searching for her. It may be called Iron Panther or Iron Meeshka.” She steps up onto the stage and all hell breaks loose, a second time, as they complete the lie they’ve been working up to since they made it back to civilization. This is going to be fun.

Of course Nick Killjoy Fury, Director of SHIELD, with his tough looking bobcat daemon breaks into their house and uses an EMP device to temporarily shut down JARVIS. Thankfully the Iron Panther suit is running on an ARC Reactor and EMP devices don’t affect those, it would’ve been bad for Tony’s heart if they did. “You think you’re the only superhero in the world?” No, they don’t actually. They heard about Dr. Banner when the Hulk was created a couple years ago, everyone big in the scientific community did, and Howard never shut up about Captain America. Who said they thought Iron Man was the only superhero? Not them. They just know he’s the coolest, or, at the very least, one of the most invulnerable because of the whole not being hurt through the bond to his daemon thing that happens to be most heroes’ biggest weakness. Supposedly he’s here to talk about maybe recruiting Tony into “the Avenger Initiative” yeah right.

“Teams aren’t really my thing,” Tony tells the man flippantly while Meeshka stands threateningly between them. “Besides, I’ve already built myself the perfect partner. If I ever need a team I’ll make myself one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is how I managed to give Tony a daemon too big to share a suit with him. Yes the world, even SHIELD, thinks he was separated from her and then just ditched her in the Afghan desert. Happy, Rhodey, and Pepper are the only ones left who know Meeshka isn’t missing and they’re all sworn to secrecy. She hasn’t left the house outside of the suit since they got back. (We’re going with the other guys in the helicopter either don’t care and keep quiet or die in action pretty soon after Tony’s rescue.)  
> Hey People! You can help name the daemons of the characters who have no name currently listed. I’ve got some ideas but would totally appreciate the help. Let me know your ideas in a review, thanks.
> 
>  **Phil Coulson = Amarantha** \a-maran-tha, am(a)-ra-ntha\ as a girl's name is of Greek origin, and the meaning of Amarantha is "unfading". Also the name of both a mythical and a real plant. The mythical one was supposed to be immortal. **= (“Northern” Grey) Wolf:** Facing the End of One's Cycle with Dignity and Courage, Death and Rebirth, Spirit Teaching, Instinct Linked with Intelligence, Social and Family Values, Outwitting Enemies, Steadfastness, Skill in Protection of Self and Family, Taking Advantage of Change, Intuition, Learning, the Shadow, Guardianship, Ritual, Loyalty, Spirit, a Pathfinder, Inner Divinity, Teaching/the Teacher, Careful Study, Cunning, Escaping Hunters, Ability to Pass by Dangers Invisibly, Strong Protection, Success, Perseverance, Stability, Thought (In so many ways this is Phil, including the ‘rebirth’ in that I will never believe he really died. He was cunning, he outwitted Loki and escaped death, I swear it is so!)
> 
>  **Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts = Pruitt (meaning: brave little one) = (Rufous) Hummingbird:** Messenger, stopper of time, represents optimism and sweetness, Being able to roll with the punches (Pepper is optimism and sweetness while also rolling with the punches and dealing with Tony’s crazy behavior for so long, she’s got a little bit of feistiness in her too.)  
>  Rufous Hummingbird: Often described as "feisty," the Rufous may have the ideal size-to-weight ratio among North American hummingbirds. This bird out flies all other species, and usually gets its way at feeders at the expense of slower, less-maneuverable hummers. The Rufous has the longest migration route of all US hummingbirds.
> 
>  **Nick Fury = NAME = Bobcat:** Clear Vision in Dark Places, Vigilance, Suspicion, Seeking Ancient Mystical Mysteries, Ability to Live in Solitude, Ability to See Through Masks, Solitary and Territorial (does this need any explanation?)
> 
> Dog(s): loyal, friendly, ‘man’s best friend’, often dogs symbolize a close family bond as in a pack, many servants possess a dog daemon of some kind (as mentioned in ‘His Dark Materials’), they are known as good, loyal, workers in the service of who or what ever they consider their ‘master’, different breeds are more known for certain things
> 
>  **Happy Hogan = NAME = German Shepherd:** obedient, brave, defensive and energetic type of dog, praised for mental alertness, considered one of the smartest dog breeds, used as police dogs they can symbolize justice and protection, also sometimes trained and used as guard and/or attack dogs they have an aspect of aggression and a trained fighter, commonly used as guide dogs for the blind there is an aspect of guidance and assistance in overcoming obstacles, visually appealing, incredible sense of smell, known for their loyalty, stamina, sound temperament, excellence in physical structure, and working ability (yeah this is Happy the friend/bodyguard/chauffer)
> 
>  **Christine Everhart = NAME = Chihuahua:** Generally unsuitable for homes with small children they tend to be fiercely loyal to one particular owner and in some cases may become overprotective of that person especially around other people or animals. They do not always get along with other breeds as they tend to have a "clannish" nature and often prefer the companionship of other Chihuahuas over other dogs. When ill-tempered Chihuahuas are easily provoked to attack. Chihuahuas love dens and will often burrow themselves in pillows, clothes hampers, and blankets. They are often found under the covers or at the bottom of the bed, deep in what they believe is their den. (So no this one wasn’t just random. Christine was rather ill-tempered and ready to attack Tony, even before he slept with her, also hence the not always getting along well with those not also Chihuahuas. And the wrapped in covers from the morning after scene -den.)


	3. Everyone Wants to Fly

It doesn’t take long for the rest of the world to try and replicate the Iron Man armor. Surprisingly enough, or perhaps not, no one really tries to go the route of creating another robot like Iron Panther supposedly is. Theoretically a simple robot should be easier to engineer than a suit of armor capable of sustained flight with a human and their daemon inside. But there are a few things stopping everyone from focusing too closely on her. Iron Meeshka makes everyone in Tony’s everyday life uncomfortable because it is a robot in the place where his daemon should be. He should have a daemon, or at the least be somehow affected by his loss, by missing a piece of his soul, but he doesn’t have anything besides a big machine and a carefree attitude and that unnerves everyone else. Iron Panther makes people uncomfortable as it fights alongside Iron Man because it is clearly a free thinking entity, an AI with Tony holding override codes is what they tell people. It is a weapon that disregards the usual conventions of combat.

Daemons fight other daemons while their humans fight each other. That’s how it has always worked. Daemons do not attack weapons depots or human terrorists. Which is why everyone still so readily believes she is not a daemon. They fall for the robot story because she doesn’t act like a daemon usually does any more. Frankly she thinks that warfare should have always consisted of each side targeting the other’s daemons. When you injure a person’s daemon they feel the same pain and often it is amplified with feelings of wrongness due to another person coming into contact with their daemon. On the other hand if you hurt a daemon’s human the daemon only feels the pain their person does and physical injuries don’t cross over between them, it’s why Meeshka felt the pain of the explosion but there is no shrapnel threatening her heart.

Meeshka fights with an eye for efficiency, so does Tony. If sending a repulsor blast into a grenade launcher will cause the most enemies to be taken out then that is what she will do. If taking down the human leader first will cause the followers to surrender then she will attack that human. She doesn’t bother with the polite ‘only fight the daemon of the person fighting your person’ nonsense. It makes so much more sense for them to divide and conquer. Now that she’s protected from anyone touching her by her armor she doesn’t need to worry about not coming into contact with people who aren’t Tony like all the other daemons do. She can slash down a terrorist with her metal encased claws and not feel ill, just as she can rub, carefully, gently, against Pepper’s side in affection when the woman comes to see Tony. Although she stops doing the second pretty quickly since it always makes the woman look startled and then like she’s going to start crying.

She reinforces the concept of her being merely a smart robot and the world sees Tony, and subsequently her, as a broken, distorted, shell. He is Mr. Potato-Head missing all of his attachable features, the discarded toy that without all its absent parts is too boring and ugly for the child to want any longer. Everyone says they feel sorry for him, they act like they do too, but whenever they enter a room, whenever he enters but even more obviously when she is with him too, all the humans glance at their daemons and all the daemons shift closer and into contact with their humans. They are all outwardly afraid to lose half of their soul. Subconsciously they are afraid of catching whatever callus deformity Tony has that makes him care so little for the fate of his daemon even if their bond was severed.

There are rumors of course. A large group, many psychologists included, believes the tortures inflicted upon Tony by the terrorists who held him captive were so great they shattered not only his bond with his daemon but also his ability to care about things like a normal human being. An almost equally popular theory is that somehow their captors managed to cut the bond enough to force Tony to watch them kill Meeshka but remain alive once she was dead and he refuses to look for her because he knows she is already dead but doesn’t want to admit it. One of the more wild, yet somehow not, guesses is that in the despair over their forced separation Tony and Meeshka managed to transcend mere mortal bodies and melded themselves together on a spiritual realm or level which caused their physical bodies to combine.

Tony covertly visits the sites dedicated to this idea and encourages it with ‘Toneeshka’ (as the combined them has been named) sightings and occasionally (false) ‘insider photos’ posted under another name. He’s especially proud of the picture where he’s wearing contacts that make his pupils look like cat eyes but holding another set of normal contacts in his hands to look like he’s about to put them in to cover the cat eyes. Tony now has a steady following that tries to determine what shape his pupils truly are behind his practically trademark sunglasses, they’re very specific paparazzi. Pepper gets annoyed by all the paperwork she has to do on trespassing would-be detectives but Tony thinks it’s hilarious that when he yawns in public there are forums dedicated to comparing the length of his canine teeth to the averages for people and panthers less than an hour later.

But all this means everyone, regardless of who they are, avoids looking too closely at her, The False Daemon, a robotic parody of life, and focuses on Tony and Iron Man. Governments across the globe attempt to make metal suits that can fly, although all of them are like Obadiah’s suit in that they are built to hold both a human and their daemon. She and Tony fly around the world and fight terrorism and end wars, regardless of who is on which side, they fight for the citizens and the unarmed. They have privatized world peace. World peace is an achievable goal because they are not bound to one single government, if they were every other country would see them as an armed force for that single country instead of a hero. Idiots that the old men leading the country are they would try to harness and use Iron Man for an army. It would work about as well as the atomic bomb did to deter war; only at first and only a little before the nuclear arms race began. They will not allow Obadiah’s dream of iron soldiers fighting iron soldiers come true. Besides, they are the only ones who know how to engineer an ARC Reactor.

Luckily they are the only ones who know how to create an ARC Reactor because that means they are the only ones who realize how quickly the palladium powering the Reactor is killing them. There is nothing to serve as an alternative power source and they are never more grateful for their armor as when Meeshka starts slowly looking like she did when they were first found in the desert. Starved and mangy, her fur and eyes dull, it would be obvious that they are dying the moment anyone saw her outside the armor. She stops taking the armor off in front of Happy, Rhodey, and even Pepper, especially Pepper. She stops taking the armor off altogether.

Then someone else makes an ARC Reactor. Someone whose father supposedly invented it with Howard. Ivan Vanko, he might be their downfall. The man knows they’re dying, he knows the science of it, and now the rest of the world is after Tony too. Blood in the water is right. Although Vanko probably could have thought of a better metaphor to go with his vicious looking crocodile daemon, surely he didn’t need to resort to shark metaphors when he had another big water predator right there.

Admittedly Tony really should tell Pepper, or at the very least Rhodey who has also always been there for him, risked his career to find them in the desert and again to help Tony keep the Iron Man suit, they deserve to know that he’s dying. He wants to tell them, he fumbles through almost telling Pepper so many times, but then how can he admit that he is lauded as the greatest engineer of their time and one of the most brilliant men in the world and yet he can’t invent or figure out a way to keep himself and Meeshka alive? There’s a part of him that doesn’t want to admit it, doesn’t want to admit to anyone else that he’s dying, that he has to watch as Meeshka slowly fades away knowing that what is killing her is what is keeping him alive. That’s the part that hurts the most: knowing how much he’s causing Meeshka to suffer because of his shortcomings.

Everything is unraveling around them. Starting with their health and ending with the few real friendships Tony has ever managed to make. Happy keeps giving him worried looks, he knows Tony is slowing down from their boxing matches, and isn’t it telling that Rhodey who has known him for maybe twice as long and even seen him change palladium cores still has no clue. Rhodey is so focused on Iron Man and the suits that he’s lost the ability to see Tony. Because if he cared to compare how Tony is acting now to how he has in the past he would know there is something wrong. Pepper is angry and stressed but she doesn’t get that he’s not just assigning her as CEO to avoid work. She’s his chosen successor and he won’t be around to nag or worry about in a few more months. He’s trying to take care of her for when he won’t be around, as the CEO of one of the richest and biggest companies in the world she’ll never have to job hunt and she’ll be able to afford whatever she needs. Even if no one believes or trusts Tony, the public is quick to turn on the man who was heartless enough to abandon his own daemon, he and Meeshka have everything planned out, all of this is accounted for.

Except for the anomaly that is Natalie Rushman. People don’t flirt with him anymore. Really, he hasn’t had sex since the flight attendant on his plane over to Afghanistan. That’s the biggest clue there’s something different about her; she pushes back against his flirting with just enough to keep his interest, if everything was normal. As it is it makes him suspicious of her because normal women avoid him and his lack of a daemon. Sure they pretend like he’s normal but everyone subtly finds a way to move the slightest bit away from him and towards their daemon. But she doesn’t shift closer to her daemon when she walks into the same room as him, she pretends like he’s the same Tony Stark he was over a year ago before Afghanistan, and that’s suspicious. Even Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy shift uncomfortably when he enters a room without Meeshka, or when they see Meeshka encased in her suit. Meeshka theorizes that something may have happened to her to warp her bond with her daemon just like theirs, or something similar. They decide not to ask.

Sleek and silent her daemon seems like an innocent housecat, he’ll have to look up what breed later, until Tony realizes that he stares at the world in the same way Meeshka used to stare just before she pounced on her ‘prey’. Then he looks up what it means about a person to have a cat daemon, they’re really not all that common. It worries him a little that Natalie is always calm and her daemon never so much as twitches his tail from where he sits on her shoulder except for that time when Happy surprises them in the ring and she has him on the floor in seconds, Natalie’s daemon has Happy’s big German Shepherd by the throat in the same amount of time. Tony has no idea if she knows exactly what he’s talking about or is just humoring him when he talks to her about timing before the party.

It’s part of the plan to have his wild birthday party. A public embarrassment that will cause Rhodey to take the suit meant for him. Everyone would realize something is wrong if he just gave a suit to Rhodey. But he can show Rhodey how to pilot one and let him have the codes to the workshop and then push him into taking it. Once he committed to the idea he set about making it happen. For a moment he worried that Meeshka lounging in the workshop might clue Rhodey into the fact that Tony wasn’t really drunk at all, or the added space in the chest area of the suit, extra re-enforced, for Skira to sit in so she and Rhodey could stay in contact might tip him off to the fact that Tony wanted Rhodey to have the suit. But he really didn’t need to worry; he’s pissed his friend off past the point of no return. Everything is fine.

“You wanna be the war machine, take your shot.” Tony can’t stop himself from goading Rhodey. Iron Man doesn’t need a sidekick, but it might have been nice to have another partner. Too bad it’s too late. They’ll never get the chance to fly together, much less fight together. If he uses his suit in battle again he might even drop dead during the fight. At best he only has a month left to live. So of course he and Meeshka go out for donuts the next morning. She needs to get out of the house even if daemons don’t eat. Okay **he** wants to eat donuts at least once more before he dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey People! You can help name the daemons of the characters who have no name currently listed. I’ve got some ideas but would totally appreciate the help. Let me know your ideas in a review or pm, thanks. Almost everyone’s daemon has already been chosen but the names are still up in the air, just send in your ideas. They don’t even have to mean anything! Feel free to tell me if you have an idea for someone’s daemon that hasn’t been mentioned yet. You could give me an idea for someone’s daemon now and I might use it if I like it. Everyone’s daemon is the opposite gender, unless otherwise stated.
> 
> **Nick Fury = NAME NEEDED = Bobcat**
> 
> **Happy Hogan = NAME NEEDED = German Shepherd**
> 
> **Christine Everhart = NAME NEEDED = Chihuahua** (Yes, he doesn’t really need a name since they probably won’t be back but I might put it down here if one of you gives me a good name.)
> 
>  **Natasha Romanov (Black Widow) = Isaac (or is it...) = (Egyptian Mau) Domestic Cat:** Independence, Protection, Love, Ability to Fight when Cornered, Mystery, Guardianship, Detachment, Sensuality, Aloofness, Balance, Wisdom, Recuperative Power, Reincarnation, Strong Protector, Self-Assured, Searching for Hidden Information, Seeing Spirits/Magic/the Occult (Having a housecat daemon makes her look more innocent than something else like a fox would and lends toward her excellence in the spying profession. However, there may be something else to her and her daemon. The Red Room may have effected them and their bond...you never know.) ;P
> 
>  **Egyptian Mau:** The Egyptian Mau is the fastest of the domestic cats, with its longer hind legs, and unique flap of skin extending from the flank to the back knee similar to that of a cheetah, providing for greater agility and length of stride. Maus have been clocked running over 36 mph (58 km/h). They often possess very musical voices. They are known to chirp, chortle and emit other distinct vocalizations. The back legs of Maus are longer than the front legs, and they frequently land on their back feet when taking a leap, making them appear rather haughty. Eye color changes from green to turquoise according to mood, and so do facial expressions. Maus are an extremely intelligent breed. Their speed, coupled with their innate intelligence, allows them to avoid almost all dangers when raised as ‘out-door’ cats. Unusually averse to loud noises and fast-moving objects Maus are rarely road kill, and spend their time decimating the mouse and rat population in the back yards and farms of an owner and their neighbors. Typically Maus are not social with strangers of any species, other cats in particular. Maus will fight trespassing cats with astonishing ferocity and uncannily disappear from strange humans. They tend to bond closely with one or two people, or animals, they consider family members and avoid other animals and humans, aside from their prey. Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Egyptian_Mau_Bronze.jpg

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Salt And The Sweet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/694248) by [prairiecrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow)




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